Why does the share count go up when the share button is clicked?

To understand AddThis share counts, it’s first important to understand which share counts are coming from AddThis and which are not.

The share counts displayed on the frontend of your website are pulling directly from the respective social service’s API and are therefore not controlled by AddThis. The share counts in your AddThis analytic dashboard, however, and on the “AddThis” share button on the frontend of your site are reported by AddThis.

Anytime an AddThis share button is clicked, AddThis counts that action as a “share”. Because we are not able to verify a user’s actions once they are on the social network, the click itself is counted as a “share”.

In order to verify the share went through we would need to put JavaScript on every service’s share destination page. As you can imagine, this would present problems for both us and our share service providers.

If you’re worried that your share counts are inaccurate, don’t be. We use abuse filters that catch this behavior and make sure the share counts are as accurate as possible.